


meet in the middle

by renaissance



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, Relationship Study, post-Episode 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 17:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8632264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissance/pseuds/renaissance
Summary: yuuri is the last person to know.





	

yuuri is the last person to know.

not—not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. he doesn’t like knowing things until he’s _certain_. uncertainty is half-truths, ideas half-formed, not yet realised. a jump without enough rotations, a flubbed landing. so he calls the feeling what it is:

  * adoration,
  * idolisation,
  * hero-worship,
  * _obsession,_



until he finds a better name for it. or until a better name finds him.

it’s not an open question. yuuri suspects that there’s an answer he doesn’t want to think about, that maybe he needs to find himself before he finds something in someone else. but why should the two things have to be separate? _fuck that_ , he thinks. he will define himself how he pleases. he’s with—

he takes all the posters down from his wall. no longer obsession, idolisation. he lets it become something tangible, but he does not give it a name. he focuses on things that he can name. double toe loop. triple lutz. quadruple flip. they work together, but in doing so, yuuri works alone. he makes the programme his own, sets his steps to his music, and he makes sure everyone’s eyes are on him, not—

it does become intimate. he doesn’t give it a name. they sleep in the same bed. this is not necessity. it’s convenience. it’s two people who’re in each other’s company, continually, in a formal setting, carrying that on to a private setting. they form this bubble around them, speaking english like encoded messages that no-one else is allowed to understand. they joke about it, but privately, yuuri takes it very seriously. he wonders if—

other people start to notice. that they’re a _unit_. “there they go again, yuuri and—”

then, china. then, anxiety. yuuri gives _that_ a name, because it’s shared his bed for longer, because anxiety is more dear to him than any lover. they are a unit too, yuuri and anxiety. people have tried to break them up, and failed. it’s not as easy as remembering to breathe and squaring your shoulders to face the world. anxiety is insidious, and yuuri learns to work with it, not against it. “it won’t last.” people say the same thing about yuuri and—

the thing without a name. in the carpark, quiet and cool ensconced by the concrete, almost like they’ve been taken away from the world for this, to let it all out. all the rudeness, and all the retaliation to that. because yuuri knows that much, that it’s an empty threat, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. and he says as much. for that moment, he tells anxiety to fuck off, leave it to the other unit, here, alone, with—

that, then, is his motivation. he draws strength from pettiness (because sometimes there’s nothing else) and he aims to surprise. to _shock_. it’s obsession. it’s idolisation. it’s the way that even without his glasses, yuuri knows he’s being watched, and he knows exactly from where. this thing that blossomed and festered so one-sided is unfurling anew with every trail yuuri carves through the ice, and it goes both ways. yuuri is the object of—

he almost doesn’t realise that he’s finished. the crowd is cheering for him, but it’s not the crowd he cares about. they, the unit, are the only two people in the stadium. they run parallel to each other and meet in the middle, and there’s a pause, and—

— _viktor_ , his viktor, is flying at him. viktor, after taking a moment to compose himself, is throwing it all away, because he’s obsessed, infatuated, and they both know it. they collide; viktor clutches yuuri in his arms and kisses him like a teenager with a crush and all yuuri can think is, _i’ve only ever been in love with one person_.

he doesn’t remember falling. it is not graceful, not befitting of a silver medallist. the bruises forming on his back are the most beautiful things yuuri has ever felt, and viktor says, “that was the only thing i could think of to surprise you more than you surprised me.”

and _that’s_ when yuuri gives it a name. _love_ is so whatever. this is passion. this is—eros. this is _dating_ , and somehow that’s much scarier to admit than love; love, which yuuri had so grandly declared on national television (what was he _thinking_?) and which he’d convinced himself was the beginning and the end of it. it’s love that goes both ways. somewhere between viktor’s fingers in his hair and their knees knocking together and the cold of the ice seeping through yuuri’s costume, he dimly recalls that it’s called a _relationship_.

with the benefit of hindsight, it all makes sense. viktor is looking down at him like he’s been thinking of it as a _relationship_ for months now, and yuuri doesn’t mind that at all. he doesn’t mind being the last to know, always a little slow, lagging behind everyone else. because it needed that time to settle, needed it to form the way it did. and now it seems so obvious.

“really?” he says, because it isn’t, it isn’t a surprise.

they meet here, in the middle, where they are.


End file.
